Grapevine Magazine and its sister website GrapevineLIVE.co.uk have been promoting LIVE entertainment in East Anglia for over 25 years through our trusted free listings service. Register online today and add your events.

Golly…

I interviewed some members of the Suffolk Youth Orchestra last month for my Get Classical radio show – delightful, articulate, intelligent young musicians they were, with a golden glow that can never be found in a pot. Nor from merely being young. Nope. These teens had the holy grail of skincare as yet undiscovered by the pharmaceutical companies: purpose and passion. They were in between rehearsals on their music course and when asked what the future of classical music was, they mostly sounded very positive. I nearly fell off my chair. Really? I thought it was all doom and gloom and elitist and posh and out of reach and not really that relevant any more to today’s loud, in yer face. channel-switching society. And then it dawned on me: You Live In Suffolk!!!

And, golly (outdated word apparently and I should now use awesome instead), do we have a lot to shout about this month in the county. Here goes:

If you’re into choral works, then on May 13th there is a choice of Haydn’s Salve Regina (amongst others) at Orford Church or Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius at Snape Maltings. If Mendelssohn is more to your taste, then head to St Edmundsbury Cathedral on May 20th for his masterpiece Elijah.

Some might prefer to be drawn into the intimate world of chamber music in which case one of the world’s greatest quartets – Takács – will be performing Beethoven at the Apex on May 21st. The month of May also hosts the exciting Woodbridge Chamber Concerts, promoting young professionals (woodbridgechamberconcerts.org.uk)

Some classics for me will be Mozart’s brilliant Jupiter Symphony & Beethoven’s 4th piano concerto on 6th May at St Bartholomew’s, Orford and the following night at the Apex. The Wolsey Orchestra heads to Ipswich Corn Exchange on May 13th for Dvorak’s New World Symphony. And hurrah that the spell-binding Aurora returns to the Apex to perform Brahms 1st symphony on May 24th. From memory.

A fusion of the art forms appears at The Athenaeum on May 22nd with the Goldberg Variations being played to visuals by John Law. And if it is the piano that incites your passion, then head to the Apex the following night for a recital of Beethoven, Debussy and Fauré by Clare Hammond.

And to round everything off, the legend Sir James Galway makes his first appearance at The Apex on May 28th.

Golly. Now that is awesome.

Also, this month’s Get Classical with FJ radio highlight: On Monday 1st May Fiona will be talking to Director of the Woodbridge Chamber Concert Series, John Treadway, about the events during May at St Mary’s Church which promote young professional talent. Tune in Mondays at 6pm on ICR 105.7FM & online at www.icrfm.com. If you miss the show, you can find the podcast online.

FJ (aka Fiona Jessica Wilson) was brought up by classical musicians and read Modern Languages at Trinity College, Cambridge where she was awarded a soprano choral scholarship. For the past ten years she has been working in light entertainment, touring the world with her one-woman show Bon Voyage: from opera to popera to broadway. She is now based in Suffolk and presents a weekly radio show Get Classical with FJ on ICR 105.7FM & online at icrfm.com. She continues to tour her one-woman show with a mission to build a bigger and less elitist classical music audience.